Poems Plays And Essays Author:Oliver Goldsmith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VERSES ON THE DEATH OF DE. GOLDSMITH. EXTRACT FBOM A POEK WRITTEN BY COUBTNEY MELMOTH, ESQ. ON THE DEATH OF EMINENT ENGLISH POETS. THE TEAES OF... more » GENIUS. The Tillage bell tolls out the note of death, And through the echoing air the length'ning sound, With dreadful pause, reverberating deep, Spreads the sad tidings o'er fair Auburn's vale. There, to enjoy the scenes her bard had praised In all the sweet simplicity of song, Gekius, in pilgrim garb, sequester'd sat, And herded jocund with the harmless swains; But when she heard the fate-foreboding knell, With startled step, precipitate and swift, And look pathetic, full of dire presage, The church-way walk beside the neigb'ring green, Sorrowing she sought; and there, in black array, Borne on the shoulders of the swains he loved, She saw the boast of Auburn moved along. Touch'd at the view, her pensive breast she struck, And to the cypress, which incumbent hangs, With leaning slope and branch irregular, O'er the moss'd pillars of the sacred fane, The brier-bound graves shadowing with funeral gloom, Forlorn she hied ; and there the crowding wo (Swell'd by the parent) press'd on bleeding thought, Big ran the drops from her maternal eye, Fast broke the bosom-sorrow from her heart, And pale Distress sat sickly on her cheek, As thus her plaintive Elegy began: — ' And must my children all expire ? Shall none be left to strike the lyre ? Courts Death alone a learned prize ? Falls his shafts only on the wise ? Can no fit marks on earth be found, From useless thousands swarming round ? What crowding ciphers cram the land. What hosts of victims, at command! Yet shall the ingenious drop alone ? Shall Science grace the tyrant's throne ? Thou murd'rer of the tunef...« less